A bill aimed at reining in political corruption occurring in near-invisible water boards like the Central Basin Municipal Water District made its way to the governor’s desk last week.

Assembly Bill 1728, which limits campaign contributions from entities with business before the board, is in response to indictments of former state Assemblyman Tom Calderon, D-Montebello, and his brother, Ron, a Democratic state senator, who face charges of money-laundering and bribery, respectively, in a massive federal corruption case. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Tom Calderon once worked as a consultant to the Central Basin Municipal Water District an earned $12,000 a month, according to the district’s former General Manager Art Aguilar’s testimony in a court deposition. Allegations from current Central Basin board members and others outside the district that serves 2 million customers in southeast Los Angeles County claim his contract was paid through a $2.75 million secret slush fund created by the district and its attorneys and conducted during repeated closed sessions — outside of the public eye.

A.B. 1728, authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Downey, sets a limit of $250 in annual campaign contributions per water board member from anyone conducting business before the board. If the board member exceeds the limit, he or she is prohibited from voting or participating in any decision involving said contributor.

A board member receiving more than $250 in campaign contributions would not be able to vote on “a license, permit or other entitlement” pending before the water board, according to the bill. Contracts competitively bid are exempt.

Open-government advocate Gil Aguirre of San Dimas praised Garcia for tackling the issue of money and influence on local water boards.

“I don’t think that it goes far enough,” he said. “But it is great she has moved it forward. It could change the way business is done. It is an excellent first step.”

A.B. 1728 is one of six bills in what Garcia calls her ethics package that attempts to close loopholes in campaign finance laws and restore trust in government. Her bills are aimed at water districts and came about as a result of scandals within the Central Basin water districts during the past year.

This is the first bill in the package to be approved by the Assembly and the Senate.

“Our political culture must change to make it clear that rules matter and that fundraising activities must be transparent to the public,” Garcia said in a prepared statement. “We must continue to restore the public’s trust in government so that our political institutions can thrive once again.”

Since 2007 about $166,000 of the more than $330,000 in campaign contributions received by Central Basin board members came from contractors doing business with the district, according to a previous analysis done by this news organization in June. Among the donors who seemed to benefit was Tom Calderon.

Another one of those contractors was Pacifica Services of Pasadena, which gave a total of almost $50,000 to the seven board members who served during the past seven years. The company also had Central Basin contracts totaling nearly $5.6 million during the same time period.

“We have had a lot of scandals in our backyard,” Garcia said in June. “We have an FBI investigation. Many of these water boards go unnoticed. We want to make sure we are eliminating undue influence at this level.”

But Mike Spence, a Republican political operative who has run independent expenditure committees also known as political action committees or PACs for several years, said laws limiting campaign funds don’t work because contributors always find a legal way around them.

“This is all warm and fuzzy. It is not going to change much,” said Spence, a West Covina city councilman. “The bottom line? There are always ways around this.”

For example, a contributor would give the maximum to a candidate but place the bulk of his donations with an independent expenditure committee, for which there are no limits, he said.

“It is no substitute for honest lawmakers,” he said. “I’d rather have them take the money, then vote on the contract, then hold them accountable.”

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.

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